Blood for Oil?

             In "Shell Refuses to Pay For Oil Spill Pollution" Arthur Max points out that Royal Dutch Shell, a leading oil corporation across the world, has spent 40 years spilling oil through out the Niger Delta.

            When questioned on the cause Shell’s director in sub-Saharan Africa, Ian Craig points to criminal “sabotage for 70% of the oil spills over the past 5 years. (Max)” Since Craig and other Shell executives blame crime for the oil spills, they will not take responsibility for damages to the environment or citizens of Nigeria.

            Environmental activist groups, including Amnesty International and Friends of the Earth, have seen the lack of environmental justice in the Niger Delta and have taken on Shell to gain back the human rights of the Nigerian people. Both groups have taken the oil company to parliamentary hearings in The Hague (The Netherlands Political center).

            The issue environmentalists see with the way Shell has handled the situation in Nigeria is similar to environmental justice wrongs that have taken place in the United States since as early as the progressive era. In “Environmental Justice: The Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy” Robert Figueroa points out multiple instances of possible environmental racism:

            “two of CWM’s largest hazardous-waste facilities: one in Kettleman City, California, a community with a population that is 95-percent Latino, more than 40 percent of which speaks only Spanish; the other in Emelle, Alabama, known as the “Cadillac of landfills,” well documented in environmental justice literature because of its huge size and location in a predominantly African-American community.” (Figueroa,5)

            Unfortunately, the master narrative of the world not only puts people of color below white men still, but also requires the use of oil and the destruction of the environment to retrieve it. When the two come together, both the lose.

            While we are so quick to “clean up” an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, there is another across the world spilling constantly that no one will clean. NIMBY is right. As long as its “Not In My BackYard” and those people have to deal with it, neither the Global North or Royal Dutch Shell are going to help the Nigerian people any time soon. 

(http://jlnavarro.blogspot.com/2010_06_01_archive.html)

Cliché PR

Monsanto's PR campaign is the definition of a truncated narrative.

In these two pieces, published January 30th and March 30th 2011, Monsanto gives the purely one-sided bias of a corporation out to make a profit. Monsanto is the world's leading producer of RoundUp, and also the largest producer of genetically engineered seed, GMOs, and the technology to grow them. In these two PR videos, Monsanto discusses the benefits of American farming techniques, and how it hopes to further spread those techniques to other countries with the promise of food for all.

But in reality, Monsanto isn't trying to save the world; it's trying to trap the world in its grasp, with food it owns and the tech to grow it. They destroy country’s local markets and enforce its expanding global one, so they can better control prices and maximize profits. Monsanto's vision of "sustainable agricultural" for the world is an outrate lie; it is only a system to exploit the exploitable to fatten the wallets of American investors.

A May 2008 article by Vanity fair goes into some detains about Monsanto's past and current practices. They describe how Monsanto secretly investigates small rural farmers for infringements on its patents. Mansanto also downplays damages causes by chemical infections by its products, like those from a Nitro Plant explosion and veterans exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam. Monsanto treats second class citizens in its own country with little respect; it’s no surprise that they have no care for the poor in foreign lands.

In Vandana Shiva reading "Global Harvest" we discover how businessmen and governments around the world are the ones who benefit from trading with Monsanto. The ones lucky enough to own large amounts of land benefit from the high yield practices Monsanto provides, and the governments that support them gain a higher amount of taxes with the healthy exports. But the small land owners are the ones who are devastated. They take out loans to cultivate the genetically modified crops, the pesticides to treat them with, and the fertilizer for the harsh land. Most of them get trapped in a debt treadmill and are force to sell their farm to a larger one, where they'll then work for a few dollars a day. "Farmers are transformed for produces into consumer,"(Shiva, 7) where they export all their cash crops at "world value" and buy everything they need.

What ticks me off is the ability of companies to flat out lie to an audience that believes anything they see on TV. They can flat out deny the facts in their commercials and PR and there's nothing to stop them. The businesses have their hands in the government’s pockets, so no laws will be passed to stop this, and any individual speaking up will be sued for slander or even terrorism. You see this today with BP covering up dead dolphins in the gulf from the oil spill, and not a single news network has aired a word of the deaths. So, what have we done to deserve to live under a government that allows corporations to hide the facts so they can make a quick buck, completely disregarding the future consequences?

Images: 

Vanity Affair, By Melvyn Calderon/Greenpeace HO/A.P.

Huffington Post

Articles:

http://farmindustrynews.com/business/monsantos-mobile-display-teaches-how-americas-farmers-will-feed-world

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fT-ChdL8BbY

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/monsanto200805?currentPage=1

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/08/dead-dolphins-gulf-oil-spill-bp_n_846524.html

“Two kinds of flesh are served"

Through out history men have always played the role of the hunter, provider, and protector. While a women purpose is to fill in the roll of what ever the men were not nurturer, and submissive always inferior to man. Freud once said that all women have penis envy desiring the power and dominance that comes with it. These social constructions have been around for thousands of years, power lying with the elite white heterosexual male who once again controls the master story. “We know meat-eating races have been and are leaders in the progress made by mankind in its upward struggle through the ages”(Adams) Meat has always been linked with the higher class, only those with most importance could eat it giving way to intersectionality. The idea of patriarchy comes in to play with these individuals because they actually see themselves as different and better than everyone else, because of this makes it easier for reductionism and objectification to happen. “The hierarchy of meat protein reinforces a hierarchy of race, class, and sex.”(Adams) Having the mind set of excluding ones self of being other can lead to abuse along with cruelty reason being the “other” is deviant had isn’t worth of ones emotions. Within the Robert’s Steakhouse/ Penthouse Executive Club “Two kinds of flesh are served" (Bruni) . This glorified strip club is prime examples of how men are subject the controller and the market for this type of entertainment. Here not only animals are severed but also women combining two lower classes to be used, they have always been objects within history abused many times over with the use of reductionism of their strengths in short Hegemonic Centrism. In the elite white heterosexual male perspective the “others” point of view isn’t taking in to consideration manly with objectifying woman with their clothes and how they are told to act. Even the author of the article had an aura of superiority simply with how he described the women working in the club. “With a job like this one the learning curve is endless, and it takes you in directions you never expected to go. “(BRUNI) He even began to use adjectives that are no different than taking about a woman to describe how he felt when eating his dinner. “But no matter what your appetite for the saucy spectacle accessorizing these steaks, you’ll be turned on by the quality of the plated meat”. “(BRUNI) The dreaded male gaze most like it rampant and slightly encouraged within this establishment, consuming a prize worthy or better yet king sized portions of meat while looking at women body’s, (absent referent) not really caring about the person or her life but seemly what is there at face value. On the other in of the spectrum wall street employee Ryan Pacifico who just so happen to be a vegetarian was constantly bullied “for being a vegetarian homo," (Catalanello) One would think that some progress has been made within the twenty-first century as far as stereotypes go. Wall street is a fast paced boys club, not only is it difficult for minority and woman to get in but to prove that they are just as good if not better than their colleagues. With so much testosterone around dominance and power must always come in to play. “Meat was a valuable economic commodity, those who controlled this commodity achieved power”(Adam) So it is not surprising that within a society of elite men with loads of money still have the same mind set of meat being the only way to convey male dominance. Unable to see that deviating isn’t less powerful, "It's a ridiculous male stereotype that only real men eat meat." Rick Ostrove The only way to break the cycle of uncaring homogenization, is to take everyone and thing as its own entity having importance and intrinsic value or instrumentalization. One question to dwell on is the utilitarianism perspective of degrading women in the name of good business and persuasion okay if it suppose to make the life's of others better?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/dining/reviews/28rest.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

By FRANK BRUNI

http://articles.nydailynews.com/2009-01-29/news/17914655_1_vegetarian-boss-meat

BY JOSE MARTINEZ

https://ecampus.unt.edu/webct/urw/lc5122011.tp0/cobaltMainFrame.dowebct

Carol Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat

google images

Angelica Bigsby